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All Rise...

Appellate Judge Mike Pinsky thinks that if Dan Brown got some money every time somebody tried to cash in on his title with something completely unrelated to The Da Vinci Code, there would be fewer silly documentaries like this one.

The Charge

"To conceive an idea is noble; to execute the work is
servile."—Leonardo Da Vinci

The Case

Let's get this straight. We are talking about Da Vinci and the Code He
Lived By. Do not confuse it with The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown's
thriller about a vast ecclesiastical conspiracy), The Da Vinci Cod (the
story of a brilliantly eccentric fish), The De Milo Code (where
did her arms go?), or Dave's Code (the story of a man's attempts
to erase the porn links from his browser history before his girlfriend catches
him). This is Da Vinci and the Code He Lived By, the thrill-packed tale
of Leonardo Da Vinci's rise to power and glory.

In fact, the first few minutes of this History Channel documentary sound
like an action movie trailer, Renaissance Italy through the eyes of Jerry
Bruckheimer. Read along in your best breathy announcer voice:

In a time of genius and a time of war…a bastard child grows into a
man!

Survivor in a land of assassins, he builds an extraordinary
legend—in a place where life is cheap!

We begin with a gory assault on Constantinople in 1453. What does this have
to do with Leonardo's story? Nothing, actually. But it shows us right away what
sort of a documentary Da Vinci and the Code He Lived By is going to be
for the next 90 minutes. When we jump ahead abruptly to 1469 to witness young
Leonardo's arrival in Florence for his apprenticeship, we are warned that we
have stepped into a world "on the brink of violence!"

This Leonardo Da Vinci is an ambitious hot shot right out of a Hollywood
movie, with a sort of pouty arrogance and intense thoughtfulness. Watch sexy
Leonardo stare intently as he plots to—well, I don't really know what he
is plotting—but it apparently draws the attention of "dark
forces!" (I feel obliged to add exclamation points, based on the narrator's
hyperbole.) Leonardo is arrested by the secret police (on trumped-up sodomy
charges, although the doc never does clarify his sexuality), and the adventure
kicks into high gear.

Popes conspire; families assassinate one another; Fredo betrays his brother
and must be shot out in the boat. Ok, at least some of that is true. Leonardo Da
Vinci lived in a time of power-mad tyrants (the Medicis, the Sforzas, the
Borgias) and military invasions. But this documentary focuses almost entirely on
that stuff, painting the life of Da Vinci as a gangster epic, with Leonardo as
some ambitious Henry Hill outsider rising through the ranks of various mob
families by proving himself as a military engineer. Painting is apparently just
a sideline to make a buck now and then.

This Leonardo is an unlikable opportunist. He fails to finish projects; he
feuds with Michelangelo; he caves to his mercenary ambitions by aiding
bloodthirsty bosses like Cesare Borgia. All of it is motivated by some vague
"code" referred to again and again. If Leonardo looks good here at
all, it is only because everyone else in Renaissance Italy was
apparently—at least according to this version of the story—some sort
of homicidal maniac.

While PBS still takes the high road with its history documentaries, the
History Channel has carved out a niche making what I will call "the
exploitation documentary." Loud, pushy, obsessed with sex and violence, and
awash with melodrama—the typical History Channel doc these days tries to
draw viewers by making history seem noisy and nasty. Sure, much of history
is noisy and nasty, but these docs seem less concerned with telling it
like it is than spinning history in terms of Hollywood clichés. In the case
of Da Vinci and the Code He Lived By, we get mostly dramatic recreations
of Da Vinci's life (when we stay focused on Da Vinci and don't head off for some
battle footage—of which there is quite a bit), with a few talking-head
historians thrown in to make this look legitimate.

This was all intentional, at least according to the making-of featurette
included on this DVD. The producers were looking to tell Leonardo's story on an
epic scale, which apparently to them means painting the hero as one of the
Sopranos. But the result gives little actual psychological insight into Leonardo
Da Vinci, and it treats his biography as the stuff of tabloid journalism. We
hear about his "code" repeatedly, but the documentary never tells us
what that is. Only that he is motivated by a "code," that
"according to his code" he must do such and such, or that his
"code" led him to this or that discovery. I suppose the idea of a
"code" here is only mentioned in the script as a way to cash in on the
Dan Brown marketing juggernaut. But those looking to make the connection with
find nothing here about the Priory of Sion, hidden messages in the paintings, or
any of that other dubious stuff. That is probably for the best. This documentary
is already sensationalistic enough. Involving Da Vinci in a conspiracy, when
everyone else in Da Vinci and the Code He Lived By appears already to be
involved in all sorts of violent conspiracies, might transform this from a Jerry
Bruckheimer story into an Oliver Stone story. Da Vinci and the Code He Lived
By is too much like an overwrought movie as it is. Leonardo Da Vinci lived a
fascinating life. It doesn't need help from Hollywood to make it so.